Two weeks into his tenure, the Metropolitan Opera’s new general manager, Peter Gelb, is making his mission clear: to end the Met’s cultural isolation. On September 22, the Met will open its doors for what it is calling its first-ever “open house.” Members of the public will be invited to watch, for free, the final dress rehearsal of Anthony Minghella’s production of Puccini’s “Madama Butterfly.” After the rehearsal, and after a panel discussion with Mr. Minghella and the stars, the 3,000 audience members will be able to walk across the Met stage. Tickets are available beginning at 10 a.m. on September 20, on a first-come first-serve basis, two tickets a customer. Think of it as the Met meets Shakespeare in the Park.

Unlike Joseph Papp, however, Mr. Gelb isn’t acting on a utopian vision of free opera: He’s hoping that the open house will attract new paying audiences. The Met’s box office suffered a dramatic decline in the 2001–02 season, dropping to 82% of capacity from 91%. Since then, it has continued to decline slowly but steadily, to a low last season of 77%. The box office shortfalls made the Met even more dependent than usual on its donors: Last season, only 41% of the $222 million budget was covered by the box office; the rest had to come from contributions or from earned income from records, videos, and other sources.

Although many people have speculated about the effect of the attacks of September 11, 2001, and the related drop-off in tourism, Mr. Gelb sees a simple message in the attrition of the Met’s audience.

“When I arrived, I had the privilege of being able to see audience surveys and studies that had been done,” he said. “And they merely supported the obvious evidence, which is that the audience is an aging audience, and it has not been replaced by new audience. Or there is a new audience, but it’s not been increasing at a quick enough rate to replace the older audience that’s declining. And that really informs my approach to running the Met going forward.”

Breaking down the barriers around the Met — by events like the open house and by a reduction in the cheapest ticket prices (to $15 from $26, for seats in the Family Circle) — is just “the tip of the iceberg,” Mr. Gelb said. The most important of his plans involves reinvigorating the theatrical side of the Met, largely by bringing in talented new directors, many from Broadway and Hollywood.

Of Mr. Minghella, Mr. Gelb said: “We didn’t choose him because he’s a famous film director; we chose him because he’s a great theater director and had a great idea for ‘Butterfly.'” Still, “the fact that he’s a famous film director doesn’t hurt, in terms of signaling to the general public that opera has the potential of being more than they perhaps imagined or feared.”

The great opera composers “all wanted their work to be theatrical successes, not just musical ones,” Mr. Gelb added.” They viewed opera as a theatrical art form. And over the years, there’s a danger that that can be forgotten.”

Despite the Met’s financial challenges, Mr. Gelb has brought a number of new people on staff, including a new development director, Coralie Toevs; a new marketing director, Thomas Michel; a new assistant manager for business affairs, Bill Thomas; a new director of editorial and communications, Elena Park, and a new media director, Mia Bongiovanni. Ms. Park and Ms. Bongiovanni are working on significantly increasing the Met’s television and radio exposure.

In other words, Mr. Gelb isn’t planning on penny-pinching. “Any additional money that we’re spending is going towards the artistic bottom line in terms of new productions — which we believe will have, from a business point of view, a healthy return in increased box office results and also increased funding opportunities,” he said.

Mr. Michel’s background is in theater and television: He worked in marketing at MTV Networks, was the head of marketing for the Public Theater, and, for a time, was the president of Broadway Inner Circle — the company that invented the $400 Broadway ticket. He wants the Met’s marketing to reach a much broader audience than it has.

“We’re advertising in far more places now,” he said. “Peter and I both believe that there is a sophisticated arts-goer out there, for whom the Met may not be on their radar screen. They may go to MoMA or they may go to BAM. They may go see ‘History Boys’ on Broadway. And I want to make sure that those same people also know that the Met is here.”

Mr. Michel has supervised both a significant rebranding effort and an overhaul of the brochures that the Met sends out to potential subscribers.

He hired the graphic design firm Pentagram to develop a consistent brand identity, which the Met lacked. The new logo — the words “Metropolitan Opera” against a white background, with “Met” and “Opera” in black and the rest of the letters in gray — appears now on all of the Met’s publications.

For the brochures, Mr. Michel replaced cheap paper and outdated design with thick, matte paper and lavish photographs and artwork. The cover of this season’s main brochure, instead of showing an image of the opera house — the chandeliers were a popular cover theme in the past — is a photograph from the English National Opera’s production of “Madama Butterfly.” It’s a detail from a larger photograph, showing the brilliantly colored costumes reflected on the surface of the stage. The closeup looks like an abstract painting.

Inside the catalog are reproductions of actual paintings — the works by John Currin, Cecily Brown, Richard Prince, and others that the Met commissioned for its new Arnold and Marie Schwartz Gallery Met, which will also open on September 22.

In addition to the gallery, the open house audience will be invited to look at costume exhibits and to watch a film about the making of “Madama Butterfly”by the documentary filmmaker Susan Froemke.

Mr. Gelb knows that an open house alone won’t reverse the Met’s fortunes, but he hopes it contributes to lifting “the veil of formality” and reducing the intimidation many potential audience members might feel regarding the vaunted opera house.

“When I was first interviewed by the Met search committee, I said that the Met had become somewhat of an isolated artistic island, and that it needed to reconnect itself to a contemporary society,” Mr. Gelb said. “And we needed to build bridges to make that happen, and that’s what I’m attempting to do. But it all starts with what is put on the stage.”